Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Demon
by ascian1
Summary: Short s7 post-ep reflections on how things might look from Spike's POV. Begins with Showtime. Rated R for occasional language.
1. Showtime

Rating: R for occasional language  
Disclaimer: They're not mine.  
Distribution (are you nuts?): email ascian@tsoft.com  
If anyone knows of somewhere other than ff.net that I can post  
these, let me know.  
  
Summary: Semi-series of short post-ep musings, from Spike's POV  
  
Begins with Showtime, right after Buffy cuts him loose from the  
Big Evil.  
  
This is the first in a sequence of s7 post-ep stories. Although I   
hesitate to call them that because there's not really any plot and  
no gratuitous sex (more's the pity). They're reflections, I guess.  
On what it might look like from Spike's point of view.   
  
If you like it, let me know. If you don't, tell me why.  
Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Demon  
  
by ascian  
--------------------------------------------------------------  
  
---  
Showtime  
--  
  
As she cuts him free the whole world is somehow lacking in weight. It's  
soft, like you could fall through it, and full of little prickles of  
pain. Cotton candy and metal shavings. Don't drink the water. Her  
shoulder under his hand is the only solid thing.  
  
She looks at him with dark, liquid eyes, filled with a tension that he  
cannot read. When did she become opaque? She's asking something, or  
maybe promising, but probably even she can't tell you what she means.  
She never did speak with words.  
  
She turns under his hand, slipping his arm around her shoulders, slipping  
her hand around his waist. She's warm, and although that shouldn't  
matter, it does. Her heat surrounds him like a benediction. The other  
one - she was never warm. He never noticed the difference until now.  
  
Her house is different from the way he remembers it, boarded up and  
under siege and full of strangers, painfully young girls with staring  
eyes. It reminds him of a boarding school. Is he supposed to know these  
people? Their eyes are full of awe and fear, but they're not really  
looking at him. They are hers, he can tell. Just like he is. They  
worship her. Just like he does.  
  
Her grip on him is tighter, as though she can protect him from the  
silent questions that surround them. Maybe she's protecting herself. He  
can sense that he's an oddity here now, a marvel and a mystery. They  
look like they want to poke him with sharp fingers, to see if he'll bite.  
He lowers his eyes to the carpet. Blood and fear. It doesn't work that  
way any more, but some things never change.  
  
Someone asks a question. The voice roars in his ears, and he doesn't  
hear the words but he imagines it's something like, "You're bringing him  
*here*?" Her shoulders shift under his arm, and she snaps back a reply  
that would freeze molten rock. She has never liked those kinds of  
questions, not about him. Questions like, Why are you doing this? What am I to  
you? Why now, after everything fell to shit, after trying and trying and  
failing so hard, why do I have your belief and your soft words and your  
arm around me *now*, when I finally understand how little I deserve it?  
  
The strangers are not asking these questions, of course, but neither is  
he. He has begun to learn that there are worse things than living in  
doubt. When you know the answers, there's no such thing as hope.   
  
He expects her to take him to the basement, back to the familiar safety  
of chains and concrete and the subtle torture of her presence. But  
instead, inexplicably, she is leading him up the stairs towards the  
bedrooms, and this is when he begins to understand that things have  
changed. What they have changed into, he has no idea. But as she lays  
him gently on the bed - her mother's bed, the witches' bed, but not any  
more apparently - a treacherous peace is seeping through him.  
  
She is standing somewhere to the side now, not close but not far away  
either. He can't see her, but he can feel her presence, making the air  
around her restless, like a distant storm. He keeps expecting her to  
grab him, haul him into a chair, tie him down, but she just stands  
there, making the hair on his arm stand on end.   
  
"Not safe," he mumbles, meaning that it's not safe to leave him unbound,  
that she is not safe from him.  
  
"I can handle it," she says, and he could swear that she is smiling. She  
turns away, digging in the corner, and when she turns back she is  
covering him with a blanket. For a moment he thinks she misunderstood,  
but when he looks at her to protest, it's clear that she means that  
she can handle *him*. Unexpectedly, this is comforting.   
  
"Don't eat anyone," she adds, after a pause.  
  
"Don't think I could. State I'm in." His eyes are closed. He is very  
tired. He can hear her moving around, feel her retreat. "Don't leave,"  
he says, without thinking, already less than half-conscious.  
  
"I'm not going anywhere."  
  
Later, he will be surprised by this, and somewhat confused.   
  
They are in a foreign country now. 


	2. Potential

Rating: R  
Disclaimer: They're not mine.  
Distribution (are you nuts?): email ascian@tsoft.com  
If anyone knows of somewhere other than ff.net that I can post  
these, let me know.  
  
Summary: Semi-series of post-ep musings, from Spike's POV.   
During/after Potential  
  
If you like it, let me know. If you don't, tell me why.  
Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Demon  
  
by ascian  
--------------------------------------------------------------  
  
---  
Potential  
--  
  
Unexpectedly, he finds that he enjoys playing the tutor. He's done it  
before, but mostly for minions, which was all violence and swagger. This  
is different.  
  
He always used to love hearing himself talk, but now she  
is the one doing the talking, and he provides the show to back it up. He  
likes backing her up, likes the sense of purpose. Likes the wary respect  
and genuine fear that flickers across the girls' faces when they look at  
him.  
  
It seems there is something of himself left, after all.   
  
He stalks them for her, because she asks him to. It's a mockery of the  
real hunt, heavy footfalls and clumsy lunges, but these girls are easy  
prey. There are vague stirrings of real bloodlust when he pins them; he  
is, after all, still a vampire. The effort required to suppress the  
hunger is not great, but it feels almost like free will.  
  
Plus, it's funny, watching them squirm.   
  
Catching her eye, it's clear that she shares the joke.  
  
As they walk together in the graveyard, a little apart from the gaggle  
of girls they are supposed to be instructing, there is a sense of... not  
contentment, exactly, but something like it. They're not talking, but the  
silence is gentle, and she is very close. Close enough to brush against  
his arm as she sidesteps something in the grass. He finds himself  
remembering that they were comrades, before, and something like  
friends.  
  
It's easy to forget that last part, with everything that came after.  
  
His mind strays. They were on the ground, before, he on his back and her  
sitting on him, probing for injuries from the fall she'd had him take.  
This is a pattern for them, and he is aware of the irony. He had also  
been very, very aware of their positions, of her solid weight on his  
hips, and her hand, cool against his tepid skin. Of the heat of her  
groin against his, and the way that her hand had curled around his when  
he pushed it away from his cracked ribs.  
  
Her eyes drift across him now when she thinks he's not looking. In this  
context, among strangers, they speak less and communicate more, and she  
is willing to meet his eyes, which is also a new thing. She looks at him  
differently now, and he doesn't know why. The defensiveness is gone, and  
something else is there instead.  
  
He knows he shouldn't be worrying about this any more. That whatever  
once lay between them is irrevocably altered, that he is unlikely to be  
invited back inside in this life. More than anything, he realizes what a  
stupid dream it was in the first place, to believe that because she  
chose to meet him on his own level, that it meant he had any claim to  
her.  
  
She is her own woman, he understands now. Despite the desperate need  
with which she'd sought him out, again and again. Despite anything she  
might have whispered in the dark.  
  
Usually so sure-footed, graceful as a hunting cat, she stumbles into him  
for the third time tonight.  
  
As her shoulder touches his arm, a couple of forbidden thoughts crowd  
through his mind. Darkness and sweat, soft cries and empty promises.   
  
Some dreams are not meant to see the daylight, he tells himself, but it   
doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. 


	3. The Killer In Me

Rating: R  
Disclaimer: They're not mine.  
Distribution (are you nuts?): email ascian@tsoft.com  
If anyone knows of somewhere other than ff.net that I can post  
these, let me know.  
  
Summary: Semi-series of post-ep musings, from Spike's POV.   
During/after The Killer In Me.  
  
If you like it, let me know. If you don't, tell me why.  
Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Demon  
  
by ascian  
--------------------------------------------------------------  
  
---  
The Killer In Me  
---  
  
If you'd asked him a year ago - maybe even a month ago - if he wanted it  
out, he'd have laughed. It was what he'd wanted for years, wasn't  
it? The chip, the sodding chip, agent of his downfall. He'd blamed it  
for everything, for making him weak, for making him an outcast among his  
own kind, for castrating him. For making him soft enough to love her,  
and that was the root of it all, wasn't it? Really?   
  
It's hard to remember, now, what it was like before she invaded his skin  
and made him hollow. Different, he thinks, without conviction.  
  
Now it's tearing his head apart and isn't that more reason than ever to  
want it gone? And he wants the pain to be gone, more than anything, but  
in the moments between, when she's sitting beside him with that strange  
guarded sympathy, he looks through this and finds on the other side the  
vague twin shadows of death and freedom. Release, he tells himself.  
  
The strange thing is that both ideas are terrifying.  
  
Maybe they didn't expect me to last this long, he told her. And knows  
that this is true. He was supposed to be run through a maze until they  
got tired of him and spiked the cheese. Not supposed to be released into  
the wild. He doesn't have prophecies or a destiny mapped out, full of  
future engagements that can't be missed. He rather suspects that  
whatever plan there might have been was cut short long ago in an alley,  
and that he's been living on borrowed time ever since.   
  
Something else you and I have in common, eh, pet?  
  
But the truth is that he *does* have a place in this life after all -  
more or less - and in the newfound spirit of honest introspection, he is  
uncomfortably aware that the chip is what anchors him to it, keeps him  
in place. Keeps him safe. It's a leash, as surely as the chains around  
his wrists, and while he wears it, he is a good dog, and he can run by  
her side. It's not what he wants, not exactly, but it's almost close  
enough.  
  
And now it's killing him. Cutting through his undead brain like  
a hot knife through butter. Chains cannot substitute for self-control,  
a leash does not pay for a life, and the truth of it is that the  
idea of dying almost comes as a relief, because it's become pretty clear  
to him that without the leash that's what happens anyway, except that it  
comes by her hand and he wants to spare her that for as long as he can.  
  
She makes phone calls, looking for government agents in a flower shop,  
and behind the pain he finds himself admiring her insecurity and her  
bravado. It's funny, he thinks, that she is the one who is fighting  
for his life, the way he once fought her for hers.  
Despite his somewhat morbid resignation, he finds that going gentle into  
that good night isn't really in his nature. So he goes into the  
the Initiative instead.  
  
The place is halfheartedly closed up but not sealed, a noisesome  
testament to government inefficiency. Still full of dessicated skeletons  
with grinning fangs, and as dark as the grave he once dug his way out  
of. She is with him, of course.   
  
The thing has a distinct X-Files theme to it, secret government agencies  
and enormous flashlights, and he feels an unexpected pang of nostalgia  
for a time when he spent entire sleepless days watching reruns and talk  
shows on daytime television. He misses television. He misses a lot of  
things. Ties to the world, he thinks, remembering something else he told  
her long ago, and almost smiles.  
  
They are attacked. Of course things survived, how could they not? There  
were demons here, and of all the kinds of demons there are more than a  
few that thrive on darkness and death. This is their place, and there's  
no reason to leave. The thing that hurts, a lot more than his head -  
which also hurts - is his inability to leap to her defence. A gallant  
nineteenth-century impulse, that. And empty, because she rescues him again,  
but he can't help that part.  
  
He is genuinely surprised when the government boys show up, but too out  
of it to react. Everything is thick and full of knives. She is leaning  
over him in the split second before the lights come up and he thinks,  
the thumping of humans moving around must've gotten lost in the being  
pounded by demons. He hadn't expected them to respond to her plea. A  
flower shop indeed.  
  
Told you it was a government conspiracy, she mutters, as though it were a  
joke they shared. Despite the dazzlingly bright lights and the fact that  
his head is splitting in half before her eyes, he does register that.  
  
After that things are fragmented. Someone is shooting molten lead into his  
skull and trying to gouge his eyes out with hot pokers. But they're doing  
it extremely slowly, and he just wishes they'd get on with it so that it  
can stop hurting so damn much. He's pretty sure he's going to die. Why  
would they help him? They're just here to claim the body.   
  
Somewhere in the haze, either very close or very far away, he hears one  
of them talking to her, and understands something else. He is not going  
to die. They're here, against all reason, to *save* him. This is  
something he didn't forsee. Never imagined they would be able to muzzle  
him, make him safe again.  
  
There's another option, though. Anxiety almost pentrates the wall of  
pain. Would they really take it out and let him live, reigned in only by a  
fractured conscience and dubious powers of self-control?  
  
Unconsciousness is nipping at the soft parts of his brain as he hears  
them offer the choice to her.  
  
He lets it swallow him before he hears the answer. 


	4. First Date

Rating: R  
Disclaimer: They're not mine.  
Distribution (are you nuts?): email ascian@tsoft.com  
If anyone knows of somewhere other than ff.net that I can post  
these, let me know.  
  
Summary: Semi-series of post-ep musings, from Spike's POV.   
During/after First Date.  
  
If you like it, let me know. If you don't, tell me why.  
Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Demon  
  
by ascian  
--------------------------------------------------------------  
---  
First Date  
---  
  
Just when he thinks that he is starting to understand some things, it  
all changes. Again.  
  
She freed him; she has faith in him. She believes, but what does it  
mean? She is dating again. He tries to tell her that he's okay with it,  
that he's given up the dream, but what he really means is, I've given up  
hoping that it might come true.  
  
She's beautiful when she's happy, he thinks wistfully, drinking in the  
sight of her, dressed in what technically qualifies as underwear,  
glowing in the reflected light of the afternoon sun. He is pointedly  
ignoring the invisible knife twising in his stomach. It's amazing that  
something can still hurt this much, after so long.   
  
When she leaves, the house is full of noise but empty of her, and he  
retreats to the basement. Stretches out on his back on the cot, staring  
at the ceiling, and studiously avoids thinking about what she might be  
doing right at this moment. It occurs to him that it would be safer -  
especially in his current state of mind - to chain himself up like he'd  
promised, but he can't summon the energy.  
At some point, activity from upstairs penetrates his awareness. He has  
been intensely studying the concrete ceiling, tracing watermarks and  
seams and pipes, and carefully not thinking about what she might be  
doing, right this very minute, with someone other than him. There's a  
junction here, and here, and new pipe through this section. Impact marks  
on the ceiling there, and they're serving the main course, and she's  
smiling and making conversation. Watermarks on the far side of the room,  
from the pipe she broke. She's standing in the dark with water around  
her ankles and despair in her eyes that somehow, only he can see. She is  
tucking her hair behind her ear with her little finger, dropping her  
eyes as she offers a small, self-deprecating joke over dessert. He goes  
upstairs.  
  
It's possible that there is a God, after all, because Xander is in  
trouble. Spike has nothing against Xander, exactly, except for a sincere  
and long-standing mutual distrust and dislike, but right now he hopes  
that something incredibly nasty is trying to take a bite out of the boy.  
  
True, he could check it out himself if he wanted to, with Willow or  
Giles, but surely it's better to get the professional on the job.  
Miracles do happen, because she also forgot her cellphone.  
  
I'll go get Buffy, he tells them for the fourth or fifth time, and  
leaves before they can form a more cogent protest.  
He follows her scent to a small, hidden restaurant tucked away in an  
alley that smells like butter and garlic and vampire dust. Sweat  
lingers; he'd recognize her fighting style anywhere. Not just hers,  
though - there's a male scent here too, mixed in with the action, and  
not at all afraid. He suppresses the entirely uncivilized urge to growl.  
He can bear the idea of her having dinner with someone else, but the  
mental image of the two of them fighting back to back makes him want to  
hurt things.  
  
He slips inside. She's easy to spot. Always is. He watches a moment -  
they're on to dessert now, and she does indeed look genuinely happy.  
Part of him wants to stay right where he is, not go any closer, but he  
knows it's only a matter of moments before she senses him. Instead he  
opts for the direct approach, appearing noiselessly beside the table  
just in time to watch her accept a bite offered from the other guy's  
fork. How nice for them, he thinks ironically.  
  
There is a beat, and then she turns around. Her reaction falls into the  
broad category of Buffy behavior that he no longer feels qualified to  
analyse.   
  
Xander's in trouble, he tells her, and they leave right away.  
It's obvious that something other than a simple date is going on between  
Buffy and the tall black guy, but he's not certain what. Not attraction  
- although there is that, too - so much as some confidence shared. He  
doesn't ask. He sits in the back seat, watching the other man trying to  
watch him in the blank rear-view mirror, watching him assessing the link  
between the beautiful blonde Slayer and the stranger who has presumed to  
interrupt her date.   
  
He'd find it somewhat satifying to be so distinct an intrusion, if it  
didn't hurt so bloody much.  
Afterward, when they have fought off the demon - a beautiful black girl  
with golden eyes, which would have been a coup for Xander if she hadn't  
turned out to be evil - and freed the boy, she runs immediately to his  
side. He can see the question in her eyes - are you hurt? and  
understands that it contains several meanings. Meeting her gaze, he  
takes her hand for a moment, and squeezes reassuringly.  
  
In his peripheral vision he can see her date, the Principal, watching  
them. As she leaves him to check Xander, he sees an understanding in the  
other man's eyes, and a tangible disappointment that is deeply familiar  
to him. You love the girl, of course, because everyone does. And she is  
as beautiful and unassailable as the sunrise.  
Later still, when he meets her in a darkened living room in a rare  
moment of quiet, he offers to leave town. He does mean it, sort of, but  
what he really means is that there are limits to endurance, even for  
him. Being useful is not the same as being loved, but it's something,   
and there has to be something.   
  
Got another demon fighter now, he tells her.  
  
Her response takes him entirely by surprise.  
  
That's not why I need you.  
  
Something red and sharp and too hot to touch prickles through him, so  
big that he can't put a name to it at first.  
  
This is hope, he thinks dimly, and understands that hope is the  
most dangerous thing of all. 


	5. Get It Done

Rating: R  
Disclaimer: They're not mine.  
Distribution (are you nuts?): email ascian@tsoft.com  
If anyone knows of somewhere other than ff.net that I can post  
these, let me know.  
  
Summary: Semi-series of post-ep musings, from Spike's POV.   
During/after Get It Done.  
  
If you like it, let me know. If you don't, tell me why.  
Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Demon  
  
by ascian  
--------------------------------------------------------------  
---  
Get It Done  
---  
  
Everything changes, and nothing does. She summons the demon, and the  
demon comes, and the funny thing, he thinks, is how good it still feels.  
Oh, he has the soul, and it's as firmly lodged within his  
room-temperature flesh as it's ever been, but what he has forgotten  
while buried in the depths of his own pain is how small a thing a soul  
is, and how easily it can be overwhelmed.  
  
Humans do it all the time, after all. God knows, being all soul-having  
doesn't make them good. Not any of them, whatever they might think.  
  
She wants the demon, she'll get the bloody demon.  
  
He strides down the corridor, reawakened fury swirling around him amid  
the folds of the coat like the opposite of a halo. Buffy's principal -  
his rival, his legacy, he thinks - watches from the shadows, hard-eyed.  
  
Where did you get the coat? The question is posed pleasantly, but it's a  
loaded crossbow aimed at his undead heart.  
  
New York, he answers, just as not-casual, silk and steel. Accepting the  
challenge.  
  
This, the civilized veneer over violent death, the not-at-all-veiled  
sting of well-aged bloodlust; this he understands. The one thing that does  
surprise him is that it no longer feels quite so familiar. He used to  
imagine that violence was the one pure thing, but he is starting to  
suspect that, as with so many things, he had not quite possessed the  
whole picture.  
  
Not clean at all, not really. A death leaves so many ends untied.  
Unfinished business, grieving loved ones, parents, watchers, lovers.  
Not-quite-lovers who go on nonetheless, shells of their former selves  
because unlike normal people, they can't forget. Children.   
  
One of the things that comes with the soul is an awareness of  
consequences. The demon's greatest gift is its obliviousness to such  
things. After everything, it's almost funny that it's the demon she  
wants. But that was always true, really, and he does understand it.  
  
It's the part of her that may or may not want the man that he's never  
been able to figure out.  
  
Not going to worry about that any more. Might as well try to understand the  
ocean. She comes and goes in her own time, and there's nothing he can do  
about that.  
  
Bitch, he thinks, and grins.  
As the hulking demon kicks him in the stomach he remembers the one thing  
that should never have been forgotten: pain is strength. Every scar is  
a victory. This is an ancient truth, simple as they come, and he laughs through  
broken lips because it's all so bloody *obvious*, and how did he ever  
get so lost?  
  
The world narrows down to a motion blur in which tendons stretch and bone  
yields with a slick, grinding crunch beneath his hands. Life passes through,  
and is gone.  
  
He holds it for a second like an indrawn breath, then lets the body slip to the  
ground.  
  
Oh yeah. *This* is what it's all about.  
  
How the fuck could he have forgotten?  
  
Leaning against the alley wall, he pulls the ever-present cigarettes from the  
pocket of his jacket - left there how long ago? but not thinking of that - and  
lights up.  
  
Somewhere beneath his grinning demon he can feel the other thing, the soul,  
chewing over itself. Braces himself for the stab of remorse which never comes  
Laughs when it doesn't, because for the first time in a long time, there's no  
question at all about who he is and what he's good for.  
  
He's just going to help Buffy save the world. Doesn't have to *change* it.  
  
For the first time in a long time, he feels good. 


End file.
